Academy of the Elites: Untamed Magic

by Alexis Calder

  My heart skipped a beat as I watched a tiny flame breathe to life. It danced in my palm as if it had always been there. I laughed, my stomach twisting as relief mixed with disbelief. I’d had doubts before but here it was. Absolute proof that I could create magic.

  Suddenly, the flame expanded, growing beyond my control. The fire spread as if my arm was kindling, working its way up. I screamed and shook my arm, trying to put the fire out.

  “What the fuck?” Matt said.

  “Stay calm, control it,” Zach said.

  In a matter of seconds, my entire body was alight with fire. I stood frozen, terrified, numb, confused. It didn’t hurt but there was no escaping the fact that I was still engulfed in flames.

  Zach slammed into me, throwing his arms around me, knocking me to the ground. I landed on my back so hard it sent white dots dancing in my vision.

  Zach stood and dusted the soot from his burned clothes before offering a hand to me.

  The flames were gone, but I was left smoking on the ground, my clothes burned away. None of my skin was injured, but I was naked. In front of my entire class. The whole room was silent.

  The blush I felt was hotter than the flames that had burned up my clothes. I stood, doing my best to cover myself.

  Matt threw his jacket around my shoulders. “Here.”

  I tugged it closed around me, my lower lip quivering in embarrassment.

  “New girl’s pretty hot,” someone said.

  Someone else whistled.

  “Enough,” the professor called. She marched over to me and glared, her expression cold. “You better get control of yourself or you’ll never make it out of here alive.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said. “It’s my first day.”

  “No excuse,” she said. “Matt, Zach, get her back to her room. She’s in your group, she’s your responsibility. She fails, you both fail, too. The rest of you, get back to work.”

  19

  Matt

  When I asked the new girl to join our group, I was hoping to score. As in, in bed, with her, naked. Not the kind of score where my grade and my whole future was now in jeopardy. I glanced over at Zach as we all silently made our way out of the classroom.

  “Dad is going to kill us,” I said through our telepathic bond.

  “Mom would kill us if we didn’t help her,” Zach answered.

  I frowned. Our mother was the type to take in strays. We had two dozen barn cats living on our country property because she was constantly caring for any abandoned creature she found. The vet was a regular visitor, always working on helping some poor flea-bitten, starving animal my mom took in.

  “This isn’t the same, though. She’s a mage. Not an injured bird.”

  “Same thing, higher stakes,” Zach answered.

  “Hey, where are you going?” I asked, realizing that Raven had passed the hall that took us to the tower stairs.

  “My room is in the dungeon.” She blinked at us, her expression blank.

  “For real?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, you don’t have to come with me. I get that I fucked up but I’ll work on it, okay? Is there like a YouTube for mages or something where I can watch some videos?”

  I smiled despite myself. “You’ll find the internet isn’t a thing here, so no, you won’t find a blog or video to help you.”

  She cocked her eyebrow. “Does anybody read blogs anymore?”

  “You’re missing the point,” I said.

  “No, I get it.” She pointed at me. “You wanted to fuck me.” Then she pointed to Zach. “You might be a genuinely nice person, but you have an asshole brother.” She pointed her finger at herself. “And I’m a colossal fuck up. Sound about right?”

  There was something about her tone and the way she popped her hip when she put her hand there, that had me aching for her. There was no denying that I wanted to fuck her when we first met. But now, it wasn’t just a way to pass the time. Now, I had to conquer her. I had to know what that attitude would be like in the bedroom.

  She folded her arms over her chest. She looked damn sexy in just my jacket. My cock twitched at the thought that my jacket was all that stood between me and her naked body. Which, from the brief glance I got after she burned off all her clothes, was quite stunning.

  “Quit smirking at me,” she said.

  “So sorry, princess, should I avert my gaze?” I asked.

  “That’s enough,” Zach said. “It doesn’t matter what any of us want. You have to get better and we have to help you.”

  “And how are you going to manage that? Last time you tried to help me I burned off all of my clothes,” she said.

  “Magic meld,” Zach said.

  I looked at him, my eyes widening in disbelief. “No way. Too dangerous. Too many consequences.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Zach said.

  Frustrated, I ran a hand through my hair. “Tell me, Raven, how was your training at home? Did your tutors focus on practical stuff?”

  “I didn’t have tutors,” she said. “I…”

  “Go on,” Zach said.

  Her eyes darted from side to side as if checking to see if we were alone. Then, she looked back at me. “Fine. I just found out I was a mage the day I arrived here, okay? I’m learning as I go. I used magic for the first time on accident and then they made me come here.”

  “That was not what I was expecting,” Zach said.

  “Me neither.” I glanced at my twin. “You’re right. We don’t have a choice.”

  “Should I be worried?” Raven asked.

  “About?” I asked.

  “Whatever the fuck you two have been talking about with your secret twin magic,” she said, dropping her hands to her side in frustration. The jacket opened, revealing her breasts and her soot covered skin. She quickly pulled it closed.

  “You could tell we were communicating?” Zach asked.

  “Yeah, it was obvious you were doing something. Plus, hello, this is magic school,” she said.

  “Right,” Zach said.

  The bell rang and the hum of conversation and footsteps of dozens of students moving to their next class filled the hall.

  “Come on, we need to get out of here,” I said, grabbing Raven’s upper arm.

  She tugged it away. “I’ve got another class after this.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get you excused,” Zach said.

  “You can do that?” I asked.

  “For the money our parents are sending to this school, they should let us do whatever we damn well please,” I said.

  She licked her lips and looked down at the ground. I could tell she was nervous about something but now wasn’t the time. We needed to get out of the hallway and somewhere quiet so we could try the magic meld.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll go to our room.”

  She hesitated, and for a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to follow. Then, she nodded and started moving.

  We cut through the students and down the hall to the winding staircase that led up the tower. It was a wide column heading up ten levels above the rest of the building with platforms leading to rooms on each level. Each floor had 4 bedrooms with the exception of the seventh floor, which had only one massive set of rooms that wrapped all the way around the winding interior staircase. That was our stop.

  Since our family started this whole place a hundred years ago and still made hefty donations every year, we were given what we affectionally called the sacred suite. In past generations, the massive suite had been used by one child at a time as our family had a strict one-kid policy. They had some weird belief about spreading the magic too thin and believed that having more kids could result in children with no magic, which were seen as lower than shifters to people like my parents. The whole lot of them were a bunch of assholes.

  “Here we are,” Zach said, sliding his keycard into the slot. “Home sweet home.”

  I gestured for Raven to enter the room and she stepped in, then
froze in the foyer. “This is your room?”

  “Rooms,” I said. “It’s a suite.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  I glanced around, taking in the space I rarely stopped to admire. To an outsider, it was probably over the top. The floors were made of gray marble streaked through with white. The walls were covered in black and white damask, textured wallpaper. As you looked into the space, you could see the rich wood floors of the living area and the high end, modern furniture.

  Everything in here screamed wealth. Which was exactly what my family was going for when they remodeled it a few years ago.

  “Doesn’t exactly scream college dorm,” Raven said. “But then again, the canopy bed in my room doesn’t either. They really went all out when they decorated this place, didn’t they?”

  “Well, it’s sort of our…” Zach began until I elbowed him in the side.

  “They threw us in one room, twins, you know,” I said.

  “Right.” She walked into the living area then stopped near an eighteenth-century globe shaped liquor cabinet. Her brow furrowed and she dragged her fingertips along the edge of the globe.

  I swallowed hard, wishing those fingers were dragging along my skin. Shaking my head, I tried to push the thoughts of the two of us together away. She was hot for sure, but I had a feeling she was more trouble than she was worth.

  Zach walked over to her and set his hand on top of hers, guiding it along the globe until they reached the seam.

  Heat rose in my chest as jealousy flared. I didn’t want him touching her. I wanted her to myself.

  I took a step back, surprised by my reaction. I’d never cared which girls Zach fucked. Neither of us let girls stick around long enough to get attached. We’d passed off girls to each other enough times to have an understanding. When you had as much money as we did and you carried the Obscura name, things came easy. Even girls.

  Zach opened the top of the globe, revealing the liquor and glasses inside.

  “That’s really cool,” Raven said. “Right out of a movie.”

  “Want a drink?” Zach asked, lifting a bottle of brown liquor.

  “It’s like ten in the morning,” she said. “Besides, I’d rather have something else to wear.”

  Zach set the bottle back down and closed the top. I took the opportunity to head to my room and grab an oversized gym shirt. It would probably fit her like a dress.

  When I returned, Raven was giggling at something Zach said. Rage twisted my gut, and I threw the shirt at Zach, harder than I should have.

  “What the fuck?” He caught it but nearly lost his balance. “Was that necessary?”

  “We have things to do,” I said. “We can get her excused for a while, but we don’t have time for you to take her to your bedroom right now.”

  “Nobody is taking me to their bedroom, you get that right?” Raven grabbed the shirt out of Zach’s hands and marched down the hall.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Zach stomped over to me. “What the hell, Mr. Cockblock?”

  “Did you ever think about the fact that I saw her first?” I asked.

  “So that’s what this is about,” he said. “Well, she thinks you’re a pig and she hates you so you have no shot. Why fuck it up for me?”

  “You think you’re going to have a shot if she hates someone who wears the same face?” I asked.

  “How about you stop trying to decide who will get to fuck me and start being gentlemen who realize it’s not your choice. I don’t know what kind of women you’re used to but you can’t do this to people. It’s wrong.”

  Her words made me feel like I’d been slapped in the face. I knew I wouldn’t have said that if I thought she was back in the room. I wasn’t good with people I wasn’t paying and Raven wasn’t one of the usual girls who would throw themselves at us.

  “I’m sorry, Raven,” Zach said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said.

  “Look at that, maybe there is hope for both of you,” she said. “As my class partners. Not as bedroom partners. Because that, boys, is never going to happen.”

  20

  Raven

  There was something different about these men. Granted, I didn’t know any mages aside from myself and to be fair, I had always been different. But it wasn’t the magic that made them seem different. It was something else. As if they’d never been told no in their lives. What kind of world had they grown up in where they thought it was okay to fight over women? Ugh. Whatever it was, I sure felt bad for whatever woman ended up with either of them. Or both of them. Maybe they were the sharing type.

  “So what exactly was it that made you drag me to your mini mansion of a room and risk getting confinement?” I asked.

  “We have to figure out what is going on with your magic. Find out if you’re for sure a fire mage or if it’s another element you connect with and then pinpoint your source,” Zach said.

  “Okay, pretty much none of that made sense,” I said. “For real, I know zero about magic.”

  “We’re going to connect our magic, all three of us, so we can find yours and help you reach it,” Zach said.

  “Okay, sounds harmless enough,” I said. “How exactly?”

  “It’s not harmless,” Matt said. “It can backfire or worse.”

  “What do you mean backfire?” I asked, not even wanting to get into the worse part of it.

  “Connecting magic is something that’s not done often. If we aren’t careful, we could accidentally siphon the magic from one person and give to another. That’s why we always do it in groups of three. Three is a sacred number for mages. It helps our magic to be stronger and keeps one mage from overpowering another,” Zach said.

  “Is that something that happens often? Someone overpowering someone else?” The magic world sounded more brutal with each new tidbit I learned.

  “Not even phased by losing your magic?” Matt asked. “That’s the part you should be focused on.”

  I shrugged. “Until recently, I didn’t even know I had magic. As far as I can tell, it’s more of an inconvenience than anything else. Sure, it helped me get away with my life but it landed me here. Away from my home and my job and my life.”

  “None of that makes sense,” Matt said. “They don’t just throw people who use magic in the human world into our school. It’s not magic prison.”

  I blew out a breath. I was doing a terrible job of keeping the secret of how I’d arrived. At least I managed to skip the part about being a scholarship kid as Luka had suggested. My cheeks heated and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine at the thought of Luka. Was I ever going to be able to shake our dream from my memory?

  “Look, I’m here now and I’m trying to make the best of it. Do you think you can help me?” I asked.

  “You’re sure you want to try this?” Zach asked.

  “Do I have another choice?” I asked. “I can’t afford to fail, I don’t want to burn my clothes off again, and I definitely don’t want either of you to fail despite your less than charming attitudes toward women.”

  Matt grumbled something under his breath and I ignored him.

  “Are we going to do this or are we waiting for a full moon or some shit?” I asked.

  Zach smirked. “You watch too much television.”

  “Yeah, cause I’m a normal twenty-one-year-old.”

  “No, you’re not,” Matt said. “You’re a mage and it’s time to tap into those powers.”

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  “Over here,” Matt said, gesturing to the space in front of the black leather couch.

  I followed him and then sat down next to him on top of the thick, ornate rug that probably cost more than I made in a year. What was with this place? Luka wasn’t kidding when he said it was an expensive school. With each passing moment, I was feeling even more out of place. Maybe I should ask if they could take my powers. Then, I could go back to my normal life.

  I thought of my shitty apartment
with the bars on the windows and the heater that never worked. The threadbare sheets were nothing compared to the comfortable bedding I had here and my breakfasts of pop tarts and dinners of canned tuna were already dwarfed by the food I almost got to eat this morning. Aside from the asshole I’d met in the cafeteria and the veiled death-threats, this place was a huge step up from what I had back home. Add in the fact that I knew, deep down, nobody missed me. That made giving all this up, this shot at something better, sound really, really stupid.

  Zach was on one side of me, Matt on the other. We were sitting in a weird cross-legged circle. Three grown ass adults, well, if you consider us adults, which I barely did, sitting in a circle as if we were going to play duck-duck-goose. It was a bit ridiculous. But hey, we were talking about doing shit with magic so I guess I it all sort of felt like make believe, anyway. “Now what?”

  They reached their hands out and I set my hands in theirs without explanation. A jolt of electricity sizzled through my palms at the point of contact. “Ouch.” It didn’t actually hurt, but it was surprising. Like static electricity.

  “That’s the magic,” Zach said.

  “That’s a good sign,” Matt added. “We’re already synched.”

  I lifted an eyebrow but didn’t ask for clarification. This whole thing was mysterious enough and half the time I didn’t understand the explanation. “Now what?”

  “Close your eyes, and focus on your magic,” Zach said.

  I felt a little ridiculous sitting in a circle with my eyes closed. It struck me as odd that I never went through the Wiccan phase in high school like so many of the other girls I grew up with. Yet, here I was, sitting in a circle with a couple of mages trying to figure out my magic. If only those girls from high school could see me now. They’d be green with envy.

  Something tickled in my gut, fluttering up through my chest. It was an odd sensation, weird enough to break me from my distractions and focus on myself. The fluttering grew until it felt like a bubble swelling inside me, threatening to pop.